Family Reunion's Anthony Alabi on the Netflix sitcom's nostalgic value

The Netflix original Family Reunion is a breakout role for Anthony Alabi, and with good reason. As family patriarch Moz McKellan, he’s making people laugh like he’s been doing this all his life. And in some ways, maybe he has.

Anthony connected with Netflix Life to discuss how his passion for acting goes all the way back to his childhood, how Family Reunion reminded him of some of TV’s most beloved sitcoms, and that dramatic plot twist at the end of the first ten episodes.

SPOILER ALERT: The final question in this interview contains discussion of the tenth episode of Family Reunion.

Get to know Anthony Alabi in our interview below, and stream the first season of Family Reunion now on Netflix.

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Netflix Life: What makes Family Reunion stand out in a crowded genre of family-based comedies?

Anthony Alabi: I got the feeling that I got when I used to watch Family Matters or Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, or any of those nostalgic sitcoms. It was wholesome, it felt good, it was legitimately funny.

And the biggest thing that I really loved was the relationship between Moz and [his wife] Cocoa [played by Tia Mowry]. There’s a stereotype out there for professional athletes, especially football players—that they run the household and everybody kind of succumbs to their will and whatever they want goes. I love the dynamic that Moz, this big imposing football player, was really not in charge. He’s kind of a liaison between the kids and his parents and Cocoa.

The relationship Cocoa and Moz have is very much a teamwork dynamic. It’s not a dynamic where Moz says what he I wants and we butt heads a bunch of times. A lot of times these sitcoms create conflict between the two parents, and with us it’s harmony. Every now and then we’re not synced up, but for the most part I love that everything we did, we were back to back, always together. And I think you can see that in the chemistry of the show. We’re constantly checking in with each other, we’re constantly communicating, we’re always sort of on the same page, and I love that.

NL: You mentioned football; you had a three-year career in the NFL. Many athletes move into acting afterward, so was that also the case for you?

AA: I always wanted to be an actor. It started as a kid—my dad is Nigerian [and] one of the things he really loved was movies. He would take us to the movies on Sunday and we would spend all day there. I’d be there from 11 AM to like 9 PM. It was my favorite because as a kid, that means popcorn and nachos and you’re having the best day ever.

Every movie we saw, I wanted to be that. I didn’t understand it, but I just knew after I saw a cop movie I wanted to be a cop, or I wanted to be a cowboy or a ninja or whatever it was. I remember my dad specifically, after our third or fourth movie, he was like well you can be all those things. I lit up and said, how? And he said [as] an actor. He explained what an actor was to me and that was it. It’s literally all I wanted to do with my life.

Except for the fact that I’m 6’6″, 315 pounds—so in Texas, when you do that, you play football.

NL: You earned your Masters degree in Liberal Arts while in the NFL. Has any of that education and experience overlapped into your acting career, given how different it is?

AA: For me personally—this is my own opinion—I would have really been regretful if at the end of my life, they said what did you do, and all I said was play football. That would have been a big disservice to myself. So I love the fact that I have a Masters degree and I studied criminal justice, I went to the NFL, I studied martial arts, I did so many different things and now I’m acting, and who knows what’s going to come after this?

They definitely bleed into each other. What I do is I take what I’ve learned from the previous and I apply it to the next. That helped me in this sense because [of] work ethic, keeping your head down and focused on the prize instead of getting bogged down in the pageantry of it.

I love acting; I don’t love being an actor. I think that’s something that gets confused a lot, because a lot of people come here and they want to be an actor. They want to tell people I’m an actor and I do this and they’re not working. I love acting—whether that’s in someone’s basement to no audience, or it’s on Broadway, or it’s on Netflix for millions of people. The act of it itself, that’s all I want to do. So when I can take something I learned in a previous life and bring it here? I will do that a thousand times over.

NL: Family Reunion is the first series regular role of your career, and you’re the leading man of the show. What has having such a prominent role meant to you?

AA: It’s something I wanted. Where that comes from is that athletic kind of background and just the mentality. For anyone to get to the NFL, you have to be up for challenges and you have to seek them out…If I was going to fail at it, I was going to fail, but I was going to seek it out because what happens after that is growth. No matter what I was going to give my best, do everything I could to make sure I wasn’t the weak link, and I think it turned out really well.

Being a lead on that show, and biting off a character that needed to carry the comic relief and different dimensions of the dynamic of the family, that’s what I wanted. When it came to fruition and I read the scripts and saw how the character was developing through the season, I loved it and I just tried to honor it by being present in every moment and really staying connected and grounded.

NL: The latest episode of Family Reunion takes a very serious turn, when a police officer is depicted as racist and pulls Moz over without a reason. What was your reaction to that story?

AA: The first thing that popped in my head was, I love that our writers room isn’t afraid to tackle this. This is a current issue, and I think it would have been a disservice to the show and to the fans to not talk about it because it’s something that’s happening in our culture, actually happening in our country. The fact the writers room was like you know what, we’re going to explore this, talk about this and kind of go through it and we’re going to do our version of it on the show—I thought that was very brave.

I loved every moment of that episode. It was a great episode and I think it raised a lot of eyebrows for people that normally would not really be interested in that or try to avoid that because they didn’t want to face it. In the Trojan horse of comedy, we got into their living room and were like here, this is what’s happening and it’s okay. Let’s talk through it. I think that’s the most important thing to take away from it.

Family Reunion season 1 is now streaming on Netflix. For more on this and other Netflix Originals, check out the Netflix Originals category at Netflix Life.